• Ninth Annual Spok Survey Reveals Slow Progress for Mobile Infrastructure in Healthcare

    450+ healthcare professionals weigh in on the opportunities and challenges associated with mobile devices, security, and infrastructure

    SPRINGFIELD, VA – September 10, 2019 – Spok, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Spok Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPOK) and a leader in healthcare communications, today released the results of its ninth annual survey on mobile strategies in healthcare. Respondents included more than 450 healthcare professionals from hospitals and health systems around the country, of whom 38% were clinicians and 21% were IT or telecommunications staff.

    In comparing survey responses from 2016 to 2019, respondents reported fewer challenges with mobile infrastructure, though progress has been slow. Wi-Fi coverage remains a top challenge in hospitals, according to almost half (47%) of survey respondents, down from 55% in the 2016 survey. Similarly, 39% reported cellular coverage is still a challenge, a reduction from 46% in 2016.

    For the eighth straight year, smartphones are the most commonly used communication tool, in use at 75% of hospitals.  Notably, pagers are still a heavily relied on communication device. At 53%, more than half of non-clinical staff—including housekeepers, transport technicians, and dietary staff—use pagers as their primary communication device. When asked which type of devices their organization supports, 75% of respondents selected at least one type of pager. The survey participants also selected the coverage area for paging networks as “excellent” or “good” more often (65%) than any other communication device.

    Survey respondents identified the essential functions of communication devices. Almost 80% reported communicating with care team members as essential, followed by delivering real-time clinical information (67%), receiving actionable information such as nurse call alerts (67%), and sending and receiving protected health information (60%). Half also identified sharing information from the EHR as essential.

    “As the survey shows, organizations continue to support a variety of devices for their communication needs,” said Vincent D. Kelly, chief executive officer of Spok, Inc. “From smartphones to smartwatches to pagers, the mix of devices confirms the need for a platform solution to unify communication across the organization.”

    Those interested in an in-depth look at this year’s survey results can download the full report.

    About Spok 
    Spok, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Spok Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPOK), headquartered in Springfield, Va., is proud to be the global leader in critical communications for healthcare, government, public safety, and other industries. We deliver smart, reliable solutions to help protect the health, well-being, and safety of people around the globe. Our customers send over 100 million messages each month through their Spok® solutions, and they rely on Spok for workflow improvement, secure texting, paging services, contact center optimization, and public safety response. When communications matter, Spok delivers. Visit us at spok.com or find us on Twitter @Spoktweets.

    Spok is a trademark of Spok Holdings, Inc. Spok Care Connect is a trademark of Spok, Inc.

    Media Inquiries

    Jill Asby
    +1 (952) 230-5363
    [email protected]

    Posted 9.10.2019

  • Impact Advisors Named to Consulting Magazine’s Best Small Firms to Work For List for 10th Year

    Firm recognized for exceptional culture, engagement and growth

    CHICAGO, IL – September 10, 2019 – Impact Advisors, a leading provider of clinical, revenue cycle and information technology services to the healthcare industry, announced today that it is ranked No. 5 on Consulting Magazine’s Best Small Firms to Work For list. This is the 10th year the firm has received this prestigious honor.

    “Our firm was founded on the idea that if you provide a culture of caring for your team, the high-quality results and passion for the work will follow,” said Andy Smith, President and Co-Founder of Impact Advisors. “We are committed to maintaining and enhancing firm culture and associate satisfaction and will continue to make it a priority.”

    Consulting Magazine’s Best Firms to Work For survey is widely considered to be the most comprehensive, independent source of opinion about the quality of life within the consulting professions’ top firms. Results are based on an online survey, ranking firms in six different categories: client engagement, firm culture, firm leadership, career development, work/life balance, and compensation and benefits. This is the 20th year the publication has ranked the Best Small Firms, and Impact Advisors belongs to a small group that has made the list for 10 years. More than 11,000 consultants representing over 300 firms participated in the survey.

    “We are looking forward to celebrating 10 years on Consulting Magazine’s Best Small Firms to Work For list with our Impact Advisors family,” said Michael Nutter, Vice President and Happyologist at Impact Advisors. “This recognition and milestone affirms our organization’s commitment to culture, and our overall success proves we are living and breathing it every day.”

    Impact Advisors is committed to its associates’ well-being, professional development and happiness. The firm continuously invests in opportunities for its team to enhance their capabilities and provides year-round employee engagement events and activities, including an annual associate retreat, VIP Calls and Happy Checks. Associates are encouraged to participate in the firm’s team-focused health and wellness program, Health Waves, and its virtual “fun” program, Culture Waves, featuring themed activities related to events like the Oscars, March Madness and the Kentucky Derby. Additionally, Impact Advisors celebrates each associate through promoting professional development as a priority, as well as a formal coaching program.

    The firm will be one of the recipients honored at the annual Best Firms to Work For gala awards dinner on Sept. 19 at the University Club in Chicago. For more information on Impact Advisors, visit www.impact-advisors.com or visit the company on Facebook at www.facebook.com/impactadvisors.

     About Impact Advisors

    Impact Advisors is a nationally recognized healthcare consulting firm and trusted partner of industry leaders focused on delivering clinical, revenue cycle, and information technology services to solve some of healthcare’s toughest challenges. Our comprehensive suite of patient access, clinical and revenue cycle services spans the lifecycle of our clients’ needs. Our experienced team has a powerful combination of clinical, revenue, operations, consulting and IT experience. The firm has earned a number of prestigious industry and workplace awards: Best in KLAS® for 12 consecutive years, CRN Solution Provider and CRN Fast Growth 150, Modern Healthcare’s Largest Revenue Cycle Management Firms, Healthcare Informatics HCI 100, as well as “best place to work” awards from: Modern Healthcare, Consulting Magazine, Becker’s Hospital Review and Achievers. For more information about Impact Advisors, visit www.impact-advisors.com.

    Media Contact:
    Karli Smith
    Chartwell Agency
    815-977-5343
    [email protected]

    Posted 9.10.2019

  • DrFirst Adds Adobe Sign to Backline® Secure Care Collaboration Platform

    DrFirst is first to offer mobile-enabled, real-time document e-signature for patients and providers, protecting patient safety and reducing care delays

     

    ROCKVILLE, MD — September 10, 2019 — DrFirst, the nation’s leading provider of e-prescribing, patient medication management, and price transparency solutions, announced today that its Backline secure care collaboration platform is now the first such mobile solution for the healthcare market to offer an e-signature capability.

    The integration of Adobe Sign, the most trusted e-signature solution, allows providers using Backline to notify patients, caregivers, or other clinicians on their mobile device via short messaging service (SMS) about documents that require signatures. Once received, the patient or provider can tap a link in the text message that will take them to a secure site where they can access, review, fill in missing information, and sign documents. The entire process is fully HIPPA compliant.

    “The relationship between provider, patient, and caregiver involves multiple signatures over time, for everything from caregiver consent for patient treatment to release of information to insurance companies for prior authorization,” said Bill Bedsworth, Senior Director, Document Cloud for Enterprise, Adobe. “With Adobe Sign integrated into the Backline care collaboration platform, health care teams can focus on meaningful experiences with patients rather than administrative tasks. And patients will benefit from that ability to quickly and securely sign their important medical documents from anywhere, saving them time and hassle.”

    Signing documents on a mobile device is more convenient for patients and providers and can eliminate delays in care associated with collecting physical, paper-based signatures or electronic signatures through email. Backline real-time care-team messaging and Adobe’s traceable document trail consolidated into a single secure messaging format promotes better continuity and coordination of care, safer patient communication, and improved patient outcomes.

    “In healthcare, every minute counts, especially when obtaining consent for a lifesaving intervention or releasing medical information to guide a clinical decision,” said G. Cameron Deemer, president of DrFirst. “That is why we are pleased to forge an agreement with a fellow market leader like Adobe to add this crucial e-signature capability to Backline. This enhancement is yet another way DrFirst continues to innovate and improve our solutions to support providers in achieving safer, higher quality care at lower costs.”

    Patients Prefer Text Messages

    Bringing e-signatures into Backline supports the way patients want to receive information from physicians. Only 10 percent of patients prefer to receive physician communications through patient portals, whereas twice that many (19.6 percent) favor receiving information via secure text messages, according to results from a survey conducted by DrFirst. Additionally, more than 90 percent of respondents would like the ability to communicate through secure text messaging with a family member’s care team if that loved one were ill. Likewise, marketing automation firm Emarsys reported that the response rate to text messages is 209 percent higher than phone calls, voicemail, email, or even Facebook messages while also having a 98-percent open rate.

    Backline secure care collaboration offers e-signature capability through its secure messaging solution. Built specifically for healthcare, Backline meets all HIPAA, HiTech Act, and Joint Commission requirements. The platform also offers the ease of text messaging with colleagues and patients without the risk of sending protected health information (PHI) over common, non-secure channels, which can result in costly HIPAA violations. With Adobe Sign’s integration, a provider can easily stay within Backline to notify a patient and create a link to access required documents.

    Once the documents are signed, Backline cross-checks against identified provider roles and preferences and sends a secure notification to all relevant care team members. Automatically notifying providers of signed documents and other materials in real-time is one of the many ways Backline delivers the right information to the right provider at the right time.

     

    About DrFirst

    DrFirst, the nation’s leading provider of e-prescribing, price transparency, and medication management solutions, enables stakeholders across the healthcare industry to use comprehensive real-time data and connectivity to increase their patient safety ratings, efficiency, and profitability. Today, more than 262,000 healthcare professionals (including 104,000 prescribers), 67,000 pharmacies, 1,300 acute care facilities, 23,000 ambulatory care facilities, and more than 320 electronic health record (EHR) and pharmacy system vendors depend on DrFirst’s innovative software solutions to improve clinical workflows, expedite secure collaboration across a patient’s care team, and drive better health outcomes. The company’s integrated technologies include its award-winning electronic prescribing platform, the most comprehensive medication history available, clinically specialized secure messaging, and patient medication adherence monitoring and benefits checking. Also, DrFirst was the first to offer e-prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS) and is considered the industry standard for providers nationwide. For more information, please visit www.drfirst.com or connect with us @DrFirst.

     

    DrFirst Media Contact:
    Jenn Cohen
    Amendola Communications
    404-759-3933
    [email protected]

    Posted 9.10.2019

  • News of Note

    9.05.19
    By Candace Stuart, Director, Communications & Public Relations

    CHIME launches chapter in the UK: CHIME and BCS The Chartered Institute for IT announced today that they have opened an international chapter of CHIME in the UK. Learn more here.

    AEHIA/AEHIS/AEHIT Fall Summit announces keynote speaker: CHIME member Stephanie Lahr, MD, CIO and CMIO for Regional Health in South Dakota, will give the keynote address Nov. 5 at the AEHIA/AEHIS/AEHIT Fall Summit in Phoenix, which runs in conjunction with CHIME19. CHIME members attending CHIME19 who join any of the associations, which is free of charge, can attend the keynote and Fall Summit program for free. Email your choice of AEHIA, AEHIS or AEHIT to [email protected] for your complimentary membership and discount code.

    Deadline for CIO of the Year Award Nominations is Sept. 23: The deadline for submitting a colleague or yourself for the CHIME-HIMSS John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the Year Award is Sept. 23. Nominations are being accepted here.

    More Inside CHIME:

    Posted 9.5.2019

  • Business & Care Transformation: The Second in a Series Highlighting Fall Forum Tracks

    9.05.19
    Steve Stanic, CHIME Planning Committee Chair, VP/CIO at Mississippi Baptist Health System

    The track sessions at the 2019 CHIME Fall Forum provide a rare opportunity to learn from our peers. This year CHIME will offer four tracks: Strategy & Leadership; Business & Care Transformation; Emerging Issues in Healthcare & Health Information Technology; and Clinical Informatics. Here is the program for Track B: Business & Care Transformation. Track A: Strategy & Leadership is available here.

    Monday, Nov. 4, 2:45-3:30 p.m.

    Telemedicine and AI in Practice – Digital Medicine is Now Simply Medicine

    In 1968, then-medical student Michael Crichton wrote a story that introduced America to using video for telemedicine. What was futuristic then is common today. This session outlines ways CHIME members can leverage telemedicine and artificial intelligence to provide efficient remote care:

    • Virtual ED visits, where patients now go door-to-door in 35 minutes and have a 95 percent satisfaction rating
    • Room service delivery of patient meals via autonomous robots
    • Urgent care visits from home, where patients can have an entire visit with a board-certified ED physician and receive remote prescriptions in 8-10 minutes
    • Artificial intelligence-driven clinical recommendation texts sent to physicians’ phones to drive down patient length of stay

    Learning Objectives

    • Adoption of advanced technology
    • Artificial Applications in healthcare
    • Emerging opportunities for introducing telemedicine for acute care
    • Strategies for making emerging technologies operationally effective

    Daniel Barchi, Senior Vice President and CIO, NewYork-Presbyterian

    Monday, Nov. 4, 4-4:45 p.m.

    Is This the End of Secrecy in Healthcare?

    For 17 years, UCHealth in Colorado has been sharing test results and communicating with patients online. They are still trying to squash traditional pockets of secrecy: information that is usually hidden from patients. How far are you on this journey? Come see what it took to implement:

    • Open Test Results (2002): auto-release test results (most are released immediately)
    • Open Notes (2016): auto-release doctor’s notes
    • Our Notes (2018): patients co-author doctor’s notes
    • Radiology Images (2018): showing radiology reports AND images to patients
    • Online Scheduling (2018): for primary and specialty care
    • Cost Calculator (2018): patients can see and calculate anticipated hospital fees

    Learning Objectives

    • Describe how to lead an organization to deploy a patient portal with a growing number of patient-friendly features that physicians may not initially appreciate
    • Describe what it takes to successfully deploy patient transparency projects in a large organization
    • Explain how to replicate the tools and services described at your own organization

    Steve Hess, CIO, UCHealth

    CT Lin, MD, CMIO, UCHealth

    Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2:45-3:30 p.m.

    Calling Dr. Roboto: Embracing Automation in Healthcare

    Moffitt Cancer Center has embarked on a long-term automation journey to advance its digital transformation goals. As an early adopter of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools, Moffitt has realized significant, measurable operational efficiencies and cost savings. Building upon these early successes, Moffitt is now deploying RPA to streamline workflows and improve productivity in research, finance and clinical operations. Moffitt has created a Digital Workforce framework –  based on a triad collaboration of IT, Process Excellence and Business Stakeholders – to formalize and advance these efforts at an institutional level.

    Learning Objectives

    • Provide an overview of key concepts in automation technologies, including Robotic Process Automation solutions
    • Describe Moffitt Cancer Center’s automation journey, including lessons learned and critical success factors
    • Articulate the vision for automation at Moffitt across a variety of use cases in both business and IT domains

    Jennifer Camps, Senior Director of Application Services, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute

    Jennifer Greenman, Vice President of Information Technology and CIO, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute

    John McFarland, Senior Director, Technology and Business Management, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute

    Tuesday, Nov. 5, 4-4:45 p.m.

    Transforming Isn’t for the Faint of Heart

    When David Reis started a new executive vice president/CIO position with Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH), the IT department needed transformation. He joined a stressed IT department the day following a big bang ambulatory EHR go live and faced a situation requiring disparate IT divisions to function as one cohesive team. In addition, HMH had a vision of creating an innovative, world-class IT department, so the pressure to provide transformational leadership was on. Fast forward 16 months, and the same IT department has become an incredible success story. This situation is not unique. In today’s healthcare world, both new and tenured CIOs face increasing expectations, making transformational leadership critical to their success.

    Learning Objectives

    • Understand the “warning signs” that your IT department needs transformation
    • Describe ways leading CIOs drive transformation and help their organizations achieve clinical and business goals
    • Identify common pitfalls that cause IT transformations to fail and how to avoid them
    • Articulate strategies for accelerating digital transformation in your organization

    Judy Kirby, CEO, Kirby Partners, Inc.

    David Reis, Executive Vice President and CIO, Hackensack Meridian Health

    Editor’s note: The 2019 CHIME Fall CIO Forum will be Nov. 3-6 in Phoenix. More information about the forum, including all track sessions, is available here. To register, go here.

    More Inside CHIME:

    Posted 9.5.2019

  • Help Turn the Tide on the Opioid Crisis by Sharing Lessons Learned

    9.05.2019
    By Bill Cioffi, CIO, CenCal Health
    Andy Smith, President, Impact Advisors 

    The CHIME Opioid Task Force met in Washington, D.C., in late June to identify our next set of goals and strategies for expanding the CHIME Opioid Health IT Action Center. We are poised to move forward with an ambitious plan to make a difference in opioid addiction and deaths in this country, and we are asking you to help us.

    As co-chairs of the Opioid Task Force Education Subcommittee, we have committed to scheduling at least one webinar every month that showcases members’ real-world solutions and best practices for addressing the opioid crisis. To date, CHIME and the task force have hosted eight webinars with more scheduled for this year, all free and open to the public. We will continue making resources available to through 2020 with the goal to assist providers, healthcare organizations, patients and their families successfully win the opioid battle.

    If you have an opioid program that includes a health IT component, please consider presenting a webinar. We welcome examples from the entire continuum of care, from grassroots community initiatives to programs that span large healthcare systems. We also encourage CHIME members who have partnered with a CHIME Foundation firm and have real-world results to participate. Each solution makes a difference, and the more we learn from each other, the more effective we will be.

    The content should be tailored for CIOs and CMIOs and should highlight IT’s role in creating solutions. The proposal submission criteria are similar to CHIME’s College LIVE webinars; instructions are available here. CHIME will provide support for any webinar proposal that is accepted, including scheduling, content formatting, preparation, registration and promotion. If you have any questions, please mail the CHIME Opioid Task Force at [email protected].

    There is no silver bullet that will fix this devastating disease; it is too broad, too pervasive and too complex. We believe we can turn the tide, though, by using the expertise and knowledge of our members and collaborators. Please join us and help make a difference.

    More Inside CHIME:

    Posted 9.5.2019

  • A Q&A with Digital Health and Social Media Innovator Wendy Sue Swanson, MD

    9.05.19
    By Candace Stuart, Director, Communications & Public Relations

    CHIME19 keynote speaker Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, is founder and chief of digital innovation at Seattle Children’s Hospital, author of Mama Doc Medicine, a practicing pediatrician, blogger and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Her innovations in digital health include digitizing complex medical curriculum, creating the hospital’s first Alexa skill, piloting technologies at Seattle Children’s and creating two apps.

    She took a break from her busy schedule to talk about digital health, how health IT executives can help maximize innovations to better serve patients and their families, and her career path in this Q&A. This has been edited for brevity.

    Q: Digital health is kind of a buzzword right now. For you, what does digital health mean?

    A: One of the biggest problems is digital health means something different to everybody. I take an approach that digital health is the work and focus to use evolving technology to connect patients and families more efficiently with their data and each other and resources that they need and want. There are others who look at digital health and would say everything under the umbrella; that would even include machine learning, AI, robotics, information technology at large, consumer-facing or front-of-the-house technologies, virtual medicine and telehealth.

    Unfortunately, at this time digital health has lost power in terms of terminology and so individual organizations sometimes will have to find what digital health means to them. However banal that sounds, I think that is a very important first step when funding or putting someone in place in digital health in an organization at the executive level (to define) what they believe it is and what they want it to be in their organization so there is no confusion about that.

    I look at it from a patient- and family-centric view as a physician and technologist myself.  I can order groceries online in an app and have them delivered in a couple of hours. That could include an over-the-counter medicine or a book. This morning I sat at my kitchen and helped my children determine if they wore a coat or not by asking Alexa what the weather was today where I live. Those kinds of conveniences in some ways are being translated into healthcare delivery, research and the patient and family journey through an organization. That to me is the essence of digital health.

    My own experience at Seattle Children’s for more than a decade and guiding digital health after founding our department in 2013 have shown me that even in our organization it is hard to get a unified, crystal clear understanding of what is digital health. And frankly, what is digital health today in some ways will be somewhat different a year from now because of digital technology and consumer trends.

    My expertise is in communication strategies using digital technologies to build efficiencies and affordability into healthcare moving forward. That is primarily thinking about the patient, while simultaneously thinking about what I like to call dual centricity, thinking about the workforce. Building funding and executing a digital health strategy or pilot or solution has to maintain that dual centricity approach. When you are designing it you better be checking the boxes that improve the patient and family experience and/or quality of care. Simultaneously, you better be checking off the box that potentially will make it easier, more efficient or a higher quality for your physicians and staff to do their jobs, too. If you are not checking both of those boxes simultaneously, you shouldn’t be doing it.

    Q: What can health IT executives do right now to help you achieve the goals you are talking about?

    Think strategically in their own organization with their own code of ethics, what is the difference between digital health and IT? Is there a difference? If there is a difference in their mind, making sure their organizations understand that difference and appropriately create structure around the differences or similarities.

    One of the most important takeaways if you have a chief of digital is they need an elegant and really good working relationship with the CIO. They need to share a vision for digital health. That doesn’t mean in my mind that digital health has to live in the IT department. They certainly need to be integrated deeply into IT departments because IT and data management, from the data warehouse to the electronic health record, all the information that has to be integrated is owned by those people.

    If digital health means a patient- and family-centered solution for anything, if it is for the patient journey, if it is for the patient experience, if it is for scheduling, if it is for education and information sharing, if it is for the organization of an AI tool to improve angiography or mammography or whatever it is, it is going to need to be integrated longstanding into the ecosystem of information technology. That partnership has to be there.

    I believe there is a distinction between information technology and digital health. As one example, when I stood it up our department, I stood it up reporting to the chief medical officer, not to the CIO. That was very intentional and was designed after working with my CIO on that. I want this to be an inventive and innovative space that is about the transformation of care delivery, not just about technology and data.

    Q: How did your career evolve to position you for your role as the chief of digital innovation?

    Really organically. I entered the technology space as a communicator and a physician. When I started the Seattle Mama Doc blog, it was the first physician-authored blog for a hospital in the country in 2009, it was because of my concern around the vaccine science and safety not carrying a voice online. I went to the hospital and said, “You need a blog. We need something that is kind of mom-to-mom but is pediatrician funded and good enough and credible enough to live on a hospital website.” I could put shingles on the internet but that is not the way forward; healthcare organizations need to start thinking about how information sharing is changing. Parents spend more time online than ever before. You have to take the physician’s voice to the home and social media is one of those ways.

    When I founded the department of digital health at Seattle Children’s in 2013, it was to say, “Hey, the mama blog isn’t my end game here.” What we need to do is perforate the hospital walls a bit and let emerging technologies and startup companies use the hospital to get quality and safety data to evolve their technologies, but also recognize that these outsiders are shaping and changing the way healthcare delivery is happening – create a spirit of innovation.

    The most recent one is in the Alexa space. We built a skill in Alexa called flu doctor. It is about advocating and advancing immunization communication, but we put them in our waiting room walls. Just that dinky little attempt of using an Alexa skill helped nudge the organization along to understand our journey. It can look small, but the learning can be great for an organization in digital health.

    Who in your organization is nudging you, pushing you and exceeding comfort? No one said at the executive level, “We need an Alexa skill.” I said as an executive, we have to try this. And (by) trying it in a safe way that doesn’t put our patients and their families at risk, we are going to grow digital innovation capacity and we will do it at a low cost. We have to do it because it brings the organization along. Even having the conversation: Are we comfortable having Alexa sit in the waiting room of our hospital? Why are we comfortable or why are we not? What does that mean? If 40 million U.S. households now have these smart speakers in their homes, that is relevant. That is a significant portion of our population.

    Digital health is so new. Information technology isn’t and yet there is so much new, innovation work in information technology. Simultaneously, digital health is new and will continually be new, particularly as it remains the kind of sexy word without a crisp universalized definition. We get to keep shaping that.

    Editor’s note: CHIME19 will be Nov. 3-6 in Phoenix. To learn more and to register, go here.

    Posted 9.5.2019

  • Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre in Canada Implements the New Vocera Smartbadge

    Hospital deploys solution to improve care team communication and staff safety

    SAN JOSE, CA – September 4, 2019 – Vocera Communications, Inc. (NYSE:VCRA), a recognized leader in clinical communication and workflow solutions, today announced that Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre (SLMHC) has implemented the new Vocera Smartbadge for care team communication. Purpose-built for healthcare, the wearable Smartbadge combines smartphone capabilities with the hands-free freedom of the Vocera Badge.

    Striving to be a Centre of Excellence in First Nations and northern health care, SLMHC continuously finds ways to improve the well-being of patients, families and the communities it serves. The Smartbadge was implemented hospital wide to standardize care team communication, provide clinicians more agility, and improve patient care and satisfaction.

    “The Vocera solution is no doubt the right choice for our mission to transform clinical workflows and the patient experience,” said Heather Lee, President and CEO of SLMHC. “Our clinicians have different ways of collaborating on patient cases, and the Smartbadge gives them the flexibility to securely text, make hands-free calls, and view notifications all on one device. We expect this single communication solution will help our clinicians and support staff save valuable steps, which will improve response times and positively impact patient outcomes.”

    Lee also said she expects the Smartbadge will help improve patient, family, and staff safety. The mobile device has a dedicated, one-touch panic button designed to make it faster and easier for staff to get help in emergency situations.

    Additionally, the Smartbadge can integrate with more than 140 clinical and operational systems via the Vocera software platform. To start, SLMHC plans to integrate the Smartbadge with its electronic health record and nurse call systems. The hospital will leverage the entire Vocera Platform, including secure texting with real-time situation awareness. Intuitive dashboards and reports from the Vocera Analytics solution will provide holistic insight into the number of alerts, voice calls, and texts clinicians receive. This information can help SLMHC leaders understand when and how care teams communicate to identify trends and improve processes.

    “It’s exciting to see broad use of our solutions, including the Smartbadge,” said Brent Lang, president and CEO at Vocera. “We are proud to support Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre in its mission to provide high-quality care with compassion, respect, empathy, and teamwork.”

    About Meno Ya Win

    Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre is a fully accredited 60-bed hospital and a 20-bed extended care facility. The organization provides health services to all residents within Sioux Lookout and the surrounding area, including 28 remote First Nations communities north of Sioux Lookout, the community of Lac Seul First Nation, and residents of Hudson, Pickle Lake, and Savant Lake. For more information, visit www.slmhc.on.ca

    About Vocera

    The mission of Vocera Communications, Inc. is to simplify and improve the lives of healthcare professionals and patients, while enabling hospitals to enhance quality of care and operational efficiency. In 2000, when the company was founded, we began to forever change the way care teams communicate. Today, Vocera offers the leading platform for improving clinical communication and workflow. More than 1,850 facilities worldwide, including nearly 1,600 hospitals and healthcare facilities, have selected our clinical communication and workflow solutions. Care team members use our solutions to communicate and collaborate with co-workers by securely texting or calling, and to be notified of important alerts and alarms. They can choose the right device for their role or task, including smartphones or our hands-free, wearable Vocera Smartbadge and Vocera Badge. Interoperability between the Vocera Platform and more than 140 clinical and operational systems helps reduce alarm fatigue; speed up staff response times; and improve patient care, safety, and experience. In addition to healthcare, Vocera is at home in luxury hotels, aged care facilities, nuclear power facilities, schools, libraries, retail stores, and more. Vocera solutions make a difference in any industry where workers are on the move and need to connect instantly with team members and access resources or information quickly. In 2017, Vocera made the list of Forbes 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in America. Learn more at http://www.vocera.com and follow @VoceraComm on Twitter.

    Vocera® and the Vocera logo are trademarks of Vocera Communications, Inc. registered in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other trademarks appearing in this release are the property of their respective owners.

    Shanna Hearon 
    Vocera Communications, Inc. 
    669-999-3368 
    [email protected]

    Posted 9.4.2019

  • CHIME and BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT Launch Chapter in the UK

    ANN ARBOR, MI, Sept. 4, 2019 – The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and BCS The Chartered Institute for IT, announced today that they have opened an international chapter of CHIME in the UK. The partnership allows BCS to manage the benefits of CHIME membership including access to CHIME’s online materials and admission to the CHIME Healthcare CIO qualification program (CHCIO), an internationally recognized qualification of senior leadership attainment in health informatics. BCS and CHIME will collaborate to offer delegates a unique experience at key events in the health and care calendar.
     
    “CHIME is committed to serve membership organizations like BCS to bring professional training and accreditation to leaders working in health and care IT, said Russell Branzell, CHIME’s President and CEO. “Now, more than ever before, these individuals are taking on responsibility for data, enterprise IT systems and population health analytics and we stand ready to support them grow into exceptional leaders, because we truly believe health IT has the power to transform patient care.”
     
    Adam Thilthorpe, Director for Professionalism at BCS, said. “We fully support national policy ambitions to build digital leadership in the NHS workforce. BCS members working in health and care have already shown a commitment to professional development and recognition. Our members will use CHIME’s materials to address personal development needs, and many will qualify as CHCIO and count themselves as part of an international cadre of digital health leaders.”
     
    BCS, as the professional body for the digital industries, has built up a substantial and growing healthcare community of over 2,000 members, and is heavily involved in promoting professional standards in this area.  
    CHIME is a membership-based organization serving more than 2,900 chief information officers and senior healthcare executives in 56 countries. CHIME offers online and in-person educational and networking opportunities as well as accreditation through a domestic and international CHIME Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO) program.
     
    CHIME now has nine international chapters. This year, CHIME established chapters in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland after launching a chapter in India in 2017. In addition, CHIME has signed letters of intent for partnerships with organizations in Canada, Ireland and Israel.
     
    About CHIME
     
    The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Medical Information officers (CMIOs), Chief Nursing Information officers (CNIOs), Chief Innovation Officers (CIOs), Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,900 members in 56 countries and over 150 healthcare IT business partners and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and care in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit: chimecentral.org.
     
    About BCS The Chartered Institute for IT
     
    BCS The Chartered Institute for IT, are here to make IT good for society. We promote wider social and economic progress through the advancement of information technology science and practice. We bring together industry, academics, practitioners and government to share knowledge, promote new thinking, inform the design of new curricula, shape public policy and inform the public.
     
    Our vision is to be a world-class organization for IT. Our 65,000 strong membership includes practitioners, businesses, academics and students in the UK and internationally. We deliver a range of professional development tools for practitioners and employees. A leading IT qualification body, we offer a range of widely recognized qualifications.
     
    Contacts
     
    CHIME:
    Candace Stuart
    Director of Communications and Public Relations
    734-665-0000
     
    BCS The Chartered Institute For IT:
    Claire Penketh
    Senior Press Officer
    BCS The Chartered Institute for IT
    First Floor, Block D, North Star House, North Star Avenue, Swindon SN2 1FA
    Tel: +44 (0) 1793 417 7750 +44 (0) 7727247984  
    Posted 9.4.2019

  • Vocera Enhances the Mobile Communication Experience with New Vocera Vina Smartphone App

    Human-centered design drives improved quality of care and patient safety

    SAN JOSE, CA – September 3, 2019 – Vocera Communications, Inc. (NYSE:VCRA), a recognized leader in clinical communication and workflow solutions, today announced the release of Vocera Vina, the company’s revolutionary new smartphone application. The customizable communication app presents prioritized patient-centric calls, secure messages, and alerts in a unified inbox, and provides an intuitive user experience for clinicians inside and outside the hospital. Powered by the Vocera Platform, Vina delivers relevant context about clinical events, patient status, and clinician availability, helping care teams improve safety, quality of care, and experience for patients and care teams.

    “In the busy and unpredictable environment of a hospital, physicians and nurses must connect quickly with each other and with patient information to deliver safe, compassionate and effective care,” said David Augsburger, director of clinical informatics at Major Health Partners. “Vocera Vina has the essential functionality needed to move all our clinicians to one platform for all clinical communication and collaboration, which will help them connect with the right people, make informed decisions, prioritize actions, and respond rapidly to emerging situations.”

    To help clinicians stay focused on what matters most, Vina presents incoming communication in order of importance, along with context that provides a meaningful picture of the patient situation. Drawing from a dynamic master directory and intelligent workflow engine of the Vocera Platform, the app delivers secure messaging, voice calling, and prioritized alert and alarm notifications to the right clinician or care team.

    Contextual patient information like vital signs, fall risk scores, lab values, nurse-call information, and critical data like sepsis risk indicators can be automatically attached to a message or incoming call notification. The entire care team can see the full history of calls, messages, alerts, and alarms pertaining to a patient or event within a single conversational thread, and clinicians can easily see when others are busy or unavailable and should not be interrupted. They also can reach colleagues simply by saying a name, role or group.

    “Building better healthcare technology means understanding a day in the life of a clinician,” said Brent Lang, president and CEO of Vocera. “Vina is the only smartphone app care teams need for simple and secure communication. In fast-paced, chaotic healthcare environments, the intuitive user experience helps make the lives of doctors and nurses much easier and mitigates cognitive load, which impacts quality of care, safety and the well-being of patients and clinicians.”

    About Vocera

    The mission of Vocera Communications, Inc. is to simplify and improve the lives of healthcare professionals and patients, while enabling hospitals to enhance quality of care and operational efficiency. In 2000, when the company was founded, we began to forever change the way care teams communicate. Today, Vocera offers the leading platform for improving clinical communication and workflow. More than 1,850 facilities worldwide, including nearly 1,600 hospitals and healthcare facilities, have selected our clinical communication and workflow solutions. Care team members use our solutions to communicate and collaborate with co-workers by securely texting or calling, and to be notified of important alerts and alarms. They can choose the right device for their role or task, including smartphones or our hands-free, wearable Vocera Smartbadge and Vocera Badge. Interoperability between the Vocera Platform and more than 140 clinical and operational systems helps reduce alarm fatigue; speed up staff response times; and improve patient care, safety, and experience. In addition to healthcare, Vocera is at home in luxury hotels, aged care facilities, nuclear power facilities, schools, libraries, retail stores, and more. Vocera solutions make a difference in any industry where workers are on the move and need to connect instantly with team members and access resources or information quickly. In 2017, Vocera made the list of Forbes 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in America. Learn more at www.vocera.com and follow @VoceraComm on Twitter.

    Vocera® and the Vocera logo are trademarks of Vocera Communications, Inc. registered in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other trademarks appearing in this release are the property of their respective owners.

    Shanna Hearon 
    Vocera Communications, Inc. 
    669.999.3368 
    [email protected]

    Posted 9.3.2019

  • Optimum Healthcare IT Announces Successful Go-Live of Cerner Millennium at Ellis Medicine

    Beta for Cerner’s Latest TIP Methodology and Model Content

    Optimum Healthcare IT, a Best in KLAS healthcare staffing and consulting services firm, announced that on August 3, 2019, Ellis Medicine went live on a new electronic health record (EHR), Cerner Millennium. Through Optimum’s effective project leadership, detailed planning, comprehensive training, and a proven methodology, the project was a success.

    In 2017, Ellis Medicine awarded Optimum with the Cerner Millennium implementation project. Using the Cerner Millennium’s TIP process for which Ellis was a beta site, Optimum initially provided project management and advisory services. Training and education started in January of 2019 and saw 1,300 people successfully trained. Beginning in August 2019, Optimum supported the go-live through the command center. This project was a test of Cerner’s new Agile Methodology and Model solution, and the result was a successful implementation of Cerner’s Model Suite of products.

    This achievement is the result of a joint effort between Optimum and the team at Ellis Medicine, said Jason Jarrett, Chief Executive Officer at Optimum Healthcare IT. We have worked hard with our partners at Ellis to ensure that this project was a success, and I want to thank the Optimum team for their hard work with helping Ellis Medicine meet their strategic goals.

    Optimum Healthcare IT offers highly-rated KLAS training and activation services to assist healthcare organizations in bringing their EHR systems live, and ensuring users are fully trained and supported throughout their strategic initiatives. Optimum can customize our offering to fit the needs of your organization. Whether it is a phased approach or a big-bang go-live, our leadership, training, and support experts are ready to provide the best solutions and services the industry has to offer. With our staff, methodology, and tools, Optimum has the experience to organize, schedule, and manage any size go-live.

    The partnership between Optimum Healthcare IT and Ellis Medicine resulted in a smooth transition from our old Soarian system to our new Cerner system that will enable us to serve our community better, said Ron McKinnon, Chief Information Officer, Ellis Medicine. We were very impressed with Optimum’s Cerner knowledge and appreciated the hard work to deploy our new system.

    About Ellis Medicine
    Ellis Medicine is a 438-bed community and teaching healthcare system serving New York’s Capital Region. With four campuses – Ellis Hospital, Ellis Health Center, Bellevue Woman’s Center and Medical Center of Clifton Park – five additional service locations, more than 3,300 employees and more than 700 members of our medical staff, Ellis Medicine is proud to provide a lifetime of care for patients. Ellis offers an extensive array of inpatient and outpatient services – including cardiac, cancer, emergency, neuroscience, and women’s services.

    About Optimum Healthcare IT
    Optimum Healthcare IT is a Best in KLAS healthcare IT staffing and consulting services firm based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Optimum provides world-class professional staffing services to fill any need as well as consulting services that encompass advisory, EHR implementation, training and activation, EHR optimization, community connect, managed services, enterprise resource planning, security, and ancillary services – supporting our client’s needs through the continuum of care. Our organization is led by a leadership team with extensive experience in providing expert healthcare staffing and consulting solutions to all types of organizations.

    Visit www.optimumhit.com or call 1.904.373.0831 to find out how your organization can take advantage of our solution offerings.

     

    MEDIA CONTACT
    Larry Kaiser
    VP of Marketing
    [email protected]

    Posted 9.3.2019
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